Visions of Ecstasy contains a scene, as the BBFC describes it, "in which a figure representing St Teresa of Avila interacts sexually with a figure representing the crucified Christ". This was enough for it to fall foul of the Video Recordings Act 1984 (designed to take "video nasties" out of the market place), and the film, directed by Nigel Wingrove, subsequently became a cause celebre for censorship campaigners, but ended in failure at the European Court of Human Rights in 1996.

However, the BBFC remained inflexible until 2008, when the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act abolished the blasphemy and blasphemous libel offences. Wingrove was invited to resubmit his film. He told the Guardian at the time: "I was gobsmacked by the reaction. I can see why some people might have been offended, but it was pretty mild stuff really."

Wingrove told AP that the furore had destroyed his aspirations as a film-maker: "It was my second self-financing film and had it not been banned I would have continued to make films, but that all got knocked sideways and had a huge impact on my career."

Wingrove subsequently set up the video distribution label Redemption Films, which specialises in occult and fetish horror.